Indiana University of Pennsylvania has announced recipients of the University Senate Awards and the list of new faculty emeriti.

The emeritus or emerita title is given to qualified retired faculty and academic administrators who have been recommended through a department-based process to the Academic Committee of the University Senate. The recommendation of the Academic Committee is reviewed by the University Senate as a body, and then by the IUP Council of Trustees.

The University Senate Awards, presented since 1969, recognize outstanding faculty for excellence in creative arts, research, service, and teaching. The announcement of the University Senate Awards is included in the university’s May commencement program booklet.

University Senate Awards Recipients for 2024

Julie Ankrum

Distinguished Faculty Award for Research

Julie Ankrum

Professor
Professional Studies in Education

Julie Ankrum, a professor in the department of Professional Studies in Education, joined IUP’s faculty in 2016. She serves as director of IUP’s Literacy Center and program coordinator for the MEd in Literacy/Reading Specialist program. Julie takes great pleasure in mentoring graduate students through writing for publication and presenting at conferences. She currently serves as chair on several dissertation committees. Julie’s research is focused on exemplary practices in literacy instruction, adaptive teaching, and effective professional development. Her research is published in numerous research and practitioner journals. In addition, Julie has co-authored several book chapters and published a book, titled Differentiated Literacy Instruction: Assessing, Grouping, Teaching. Julie is the proud recipient of several awards for research manuscripts, including AERA’s Classroom Observation SIG Exemplary Paper Award (2018), an Honorable Mention for Childhood Education International’s 2017 Distinguished Education Research Article award, and ALER’s Betty G. Sturtevant Exemplary Article Award (2021). She has also been honored to receive COEC’s 2019 Teacher Scholar Award, COEC’s 2019 Faculty Research Award, and the Dean’s Outstanding Researcher Award. Julie is currently serving as co-PI on the Innovative Teacher Prep2Practice grant, awarded by the Pennsylvania Department of Education in 2023.

Mimi Benjamin

Distinguished Faculty Award for Service

Mimi Benjamin

Professor
Student Affairs in Higher Education

Mimi Benjamin is professor of Student Affairs in Higher Education, having joined the IUP faculty in fall 2013 after a 19-year career as a student affairs administrator. Examples of her service to IUP include participation on the University-Wide Promotion Committee, University Senate and Senate Committee on Student Affairs (chair), Strategic Plan Implementation Committee, Middle-States Working Group IV, ASPCUF Newer Faculty Committee (chair), Center for Teaching Excellence Leadership Team, Living-Learning Executive Team, SAHE Alumni Connect Mentoring Program Committee (co-coordinator), as well as multiple search and awards committees. She is coauthor of Living-Learning Communities that Work: A Research-based Model for Design, Delivery, and Assessment (2018) and Living-Learning Communities in Practice: A Guide for Creating, Maintaining, and Sustaining Effective Programs in Higher Education (2024). She served as editor of Learning Communities from Start to Finish (2015), co-editor of the first and second editions of Maybe I Should . . . Case Studies in Ethics for Student Affairs Professionals (2009, 2020), and co-editor of the Learning Communities Research and Practice special issue on living-learning communities (2020). She is active in both NASPA: Student Affairs Administrators in Higher Education and ACPA: College Student Educators International, the two leading student affairs professional associations, having served as a co-editor of ACPA Books, a NASPA faculty mentoring program mentor, and a NASPA graduate student case study judge. Benjamin was honored as an ACPA Diamond Honoree in 2020 and received the ACPA Annuit Coeptis Senior Professional award in 2022. She earned her PhD in educational leadership and policy studies with a focus on higher education from Iowa State University; her MEd in college student personnel from Ohio University; her MA in English from Clarion University of Pennsylvania; and her BS in secondary education-English from Clarion University of Pennsylvania.

Gloria Park

Distinguished Faculty Award for Teaching

Gloria Park

Professor
English

Gloria Park, PhD is a professor in the Graduate Studies in Composition and Applied Linguistics at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. With her MA in TESOL from American University and her PhD in 2006 in curriculum and instruction from the University of Maryland, College Park, Gloria began her journey at IUP in 2008 as a TESOL teacher education specialist. As such, her teaching and scholarship focus broadly on language and writing teacher education and applied linguistics, and in the areas of language teacher identities, language teacher agency, language teacher practices, and issues of race, gender, and class connected to language education. Her work appears in internationally recognized journals such as TESOL Quarterly, TESOL Journal, Journal of Language, Identity and Education, Race, Ethnicity and Education, ELT Journal, L2 Journal, etc. She has coedited special themed issues of Language Teacher Identity in TESOL Quarterly (2016), World Englishes in TESOL Journal (2014), and Peacebuilding in Times of Conflict a TESOL Journal (2023). Her monograph, "Narratives of East Asian Women Teachers of English: Where Privilege Meets Marginalization," was published in 2017 by Multilingual Matters. Gloria was appointed as a section editor for TESOL Journal (2010–15), and in 2015, she was appointed as a series associate editor for the Teacher Education and Professional Development volume of "TESOL-Wiley English Language Teaching Encyclopedia" (2017), working with over 30 authors. More recently, Gloria coedited Critical Pedagogy in Language and Writing Classroom, published by Routledge in April 2023. Gloria continues to serve the Fulbright Office as a national screener for ETA applications to South Korea. She has recently been invited to facilitate a two-day teacher preparation workshop (May 2022) with English faculty at the University of Taiwan and facilitated a workshop (November 2023) with over 300 foreign language teaching associates, sponsored by the Fulbright/Institute of International Education.

Ben Ford

Distinguished University Professor

Ben Ford

Professor
Anthropology

Ben Ford is chair of the Anthropology Department and an anthropologist specializing in historical and underwater archaeology. Originally from Cincinnati, he now lives in Indiana with his spouse, two kids, dog, and bearded dragon. His PhD from Texas A&M University was preceded by several years as an archaeological consultant and degrees from the College of William and Mary and the University of Cincinnati. Ben is a registered professional archaeologist, the 2015 Archaeological Institute of America McCann-Taggart Underwater Archaeology Lecturer, and a 2024 Fulbright US Scholar. Two of the awards that he is most proud of are the IUP High Impact Practice Award for providing undergraduates with authentic research experiences and the Society for Pennsylvania Archaeology J. Alden Mason Award for contributions to the education and encouragement of SPA members. He recently published The Shore is a Bridge: The Maritime Cultural Landscape of Lake Ontario and Our Blue Planet: An Introduction to Maritime and Underwater Archaeology (with Jessi Halligan and Alexis Catsambis). He also edited the Oxford Handbook of Maritime Archaeology, The Archaeology of Maritime Landscapes, and New Life for Old Collections (with Rebecca Allen). Ben is a founding member of the Pennsylvania Archaeology Shipwreck Survey Team and chair of the Pennsylvania Historic Preservation Board. He also served two terms on the Indiana Borough Council, chairing the Community Development Committee. His current research focuses on the maritime landscapes and shipwrecks of the North American Great Lakes and the historical archaeology of Appalachia. Ben sees archaeology as a means to understand how the modern world developed and a hopeful way to influence the future.

Faculty Achievements in Scholarship and New Faculty Emeriti 

College of Arts and Humanities

Zach Collins, Music 

Tony DiMauro, Art and Design 

Dana Driscoll, English 

Timothy Hibsman, English 

Richard Kemp, Theatre and Dance 

R. Scott Moore, History 

Christopher Orchard, English 

Belinda Nuth Sloboda, Art and Design 

Gian Pagnucci, English 

Bryna Siegel Finer, English 

Dawn Smith-Sherwood, Foreign Languages 

Todd Thompson, English 

Christian Vaccaro, Sociology 

Matthew Vetter, English 

Henry Wong Doe, Music 

New Faculty Emeriti

Steven Jackson, Political Science, 29 Years of Service 

Jean Nienkamp, English, 21 Years of Service 

Veronica Watson, English, 26 Years of Service 

Eberly College of Business

Abbas Ali, Management 

Hussam Al-Shammari, Management 

Krish Krishnan, Marketing 

Suneel Maheshwari, Accounting and Information Systems 

Todd Potts, Finance and Economics 

Joseph Rosendale, Management 

Lisa Sciulli, Marketing 

Varinder Sharma, Marketing 

Brandon Vick, Finance and Economics 

David Yerger, Finance and Economics 

New Faculty Emeriti

Ibrahim Affaneh, Finance and Economics, 31 Years of Service 

Kim Anderson, Accounting and Information Systems, 32 Years of Service 

College of Education and Communications

Mimi Benjamin, Student Affairs in Higher Education 

Lorraine Guth, Counseling 

Crystal Machado, Professional Studies in Education 

Matthew Nice, Counseling 

Brittany Pollard-Kosidowski, Counseling 

Zack Stiegler, Communications Media 

College of Health and Human Services

Lynanne Black, Psychology 

Lei Hao, Nursing and Allied Health Professions 

Jenna Hennessey, Psychology 

Pao Ying Hsiao, Food and Nutrition 

Krystof Kaniasty, Psychology 

Mark McGowan, Psychology 

Mark Palumbo, Psychology 

New Faculty Emeriti 

Pearl Berman, Psychology, 37 Years of Service 

Patricia Hockensmith, Nursing and Allied Health Professions, 12 Years of Service 

David Piper, Employment Relations and Health Services Administration, 20 Years of Service 

IUP Libraries

Theresa McDevitt, IUP Libraries, University College 

Kopchick College of Natural Sciences and Mathematics

John Bradshaw, Madia Department of Chemistry, Biochemistry, Physics, and Engineering 

Kenneth Coles, Geography, Geology, Environment and Planning 

Joseph Duchamp, Biology 

Soundararajan Ezekiel, Mathematical and Computer Sciences 

Justin Fair, Madia Department of Chemistry, Biochemistry, Physics, and Engineering 

Waleed Farag, Mathematical and Computer Sciences 

Lara Homsey-Messer, Anthropology 

Jeffrey Larkin, Biology 

Sanda Maicaneanu, Madia Department of Chemistry, Biochemistry, Physics, and Engineering 

Sudipta Majumdar, Madia Department of Chemistry, Biochemistry, Physics, and Engineering 

Luz S. Marin, Safety Sciences 

Wanda Minnick, Safety Sciences 

Andrea Palmiotto, Anthropology 

Kevin Patrick, Geography, Geology, Environment and Planning 

Amanda Poole, Anthropology 

Bryan Seal, Safety Sciences 

Majed Zreiqat, Safety Sciences 

New Faculty Emeriti

Anne Kondo, Madia Dept. of Chemistry, Biochemistry, Physics, and Engineering, 25 Years of Service 

Janet Walker, Mathematical and Computer Sciences, 27 Years of Service 

University College

Luke Faust, Undergraduate and Student Success, University College 


Senate Awards Committee 

Tim Paul, committee chair 

Pao Ying Hsiao 

Luz S. Marin Ramirez 

Nicole L Rice